Appendix E: Reflections on the Antigone and Other Courtroom Dramas
| Author | Roger S. Fisher |
| Pages | 321-331 |
-(
APPENDIX
E
)•
Reflections
on
the
Antigone
and
Other
Courtroom
Dramas
the
“
trial
play
”
has
become
a
staple
of
the
theatre,
from
ancient
Greece
(with
trial
scenes
in
several
plays
that
came
after
the
Antigone,
such
as
Aristophanes
’
s
Wasps
and
Euripides
’
s
Hippolytus)
to
Elizabethan
England
(with
Shakespeare
’
s
The
Merchant
of
Venice
serving
as
the
most
salient
example
among
many
other
plays
from
that
period)
to
the
mod
ern
era
(with
contemporary
plays
on
a
historical
theme,
such
as
Robert
Bolt
’
s
A
Manfor
All
Seasons
and
Arthur
Miller
’
s
The
Crucible,
and
count
less
depictions
of
modern
courtroom
dramas
in
numerous
films
and
tele
vision
shows).
Although
all
these
depictions
of
a
trial
differ
in
detail
and
in
context,
they
all
depict
the
drama
of
seeing
language
in
action,
which
links
the
depiction
of
a
trial
onstage
or
onscreen
with
the
courtroom.
Many
of
these
dramatic
depictions
of
a
trial
also
involve
a
“
narrative
turn
”
(or
discourse
shift)
in
which
a
protagonist
faces
a
stark
choice
be
tween
surrender
to
man-made
law
(such
as
the
Furies
in
The
Eumenides
and
Shylock
in
The
Merchant
of
Venice)
or
aposition
of
resolute
defiance
(such
as
Antigone
in
Sophocles
’
s
play
and
John
Proctor
in
The
Crucible)
leading
to
condemnation
by
the
law
and
a
sentence
of
death.
But
neither
of
these
options,
surrender
or
defiance,
is
a
winning
strategy
for
a
litigant
who
questions
whether
the
law
itself
is
just.
Aeschylus
’
s
play
The
Eumenides
(the
third
play
in
a
trilogy
known
col
lectively
as
the
Oresteia)
is
the
most
explicitly
jurisprudential
play
of
the
extant
Greek
tragedies
because
it
is
a
foundation
story
about
an
important
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